2021 Archives

How what started out as a pleasant view of Aunt Sally's summer vacation ends up with a bloody police officer on the floor of the US Capitol and a democracy in flames. The difference between cocaine and crack cocaine is almost entirely one of pH, the relative scale of acidity or alkalinity. Regular cocaine in its original plant form, coca leaf, is commonly consumed by people across the mountainous parts of South America and has been for millennia, much as caffeine has been used through drinking tea in parts of Asia. It causes little to no harm; people can drink coca tea with no more impact than the caffeine from a soft drink.

— Is the Billionaire Sabotage of the Democrats Baked In? After the Nixon and Agnew bribery scandals that led them both to leave office, Congress passed some really good legislation to get money out of politics. Conservatives on the Supreme Court blew it up, most famously in the 5-4 Citizens United decision in 2010, and the entire Republican Party put out their hands to the billionaires and big corporations (if you know of even one single Republican who doesn’t take corporate PAC money, let me know). A large handful of Democrats decided this was a good idea, too. The past decade has seen a significant pushback against these types of politicians, with the Congressional Progressive Caucus growing and taking serious power. As I mentioned in yesterday’s rant, the big question is whether this movement within the Democratic Party will be successful in “going big” like FDR and LBJ did, or will get crushed by the billionaires and the corporations empowered by SCOTUS, including the media corporations. Laura Clawson over at Daily Kos adds some very insightful thoughts on the issue of the media’s inherent bias against the progressives and toward the Gottheimers' of the party.

What if foreigners are, today, the ones largely responsible for much of the division, death and destruction sweeping America and, in many cases, are doing it not for ideology but just to make a buck? The stories of Covid deaths and disability are often tragic, and they’re happening by the millions in America. These stories — and the grim spectacle of armed white people protesting at schools, election sites and hospitals — illustrate a dangerous new intersection of public health, politics, and social media. Many, it turns out, are driven by an entire foreign-based industry called “troll farms” using social media to crank Americans into foaming-at-the-mouth crazy, including armed groups in our streets, just to make money.

If Angela Merkel has governed Germany for 16 years as a “conservative,” there are probably a lot of Americans ready to adopt the label. The headline at Fox “News” blares: “German Elections: Big Setback for Merkel’s Conservatives as Center-Left Party Comes Out on Top.” In a single sentence, it summarizes everything wrong with how American media and the American public understand what “conservative” means.